the name of God

Allah (English pronunciation: /ˈælə/ or /ˈɑːlə/;[1] Arabic: الله‎ Allāh,  is the Arabic word for God (al ilāh, literally "the God".[2][3][4] 

The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Elah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew.[5][6]

It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam,[7] but it has also been used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times.[8] 

It is written as ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".[17] 

Pre-Islamic Christians, Jews and the monotheistic Arabs called Hanifs used the name Allah and the terms 'Bismillah', 'in the name of Allah' to refer to their supreme deity in Arabic stone inscriptions centuries before Islam.[29]

According to Böwering, in contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not have associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God and jinn.[30]

According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (29:46). The Qur’an's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites.[22]

The Aramaic word for "God" in the language of Assyrian Christians is ʼĔlāhā, or Alaha. Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word "Allah" to mean "God".[5]

The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for "God" than "Allah".[21]

(Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses Alla for "God".) Arab Christians, for example, use the terms Allāh al-ab (الله الأب) for God the Father, Allāh al-ibn (الله الابن) for God the Son, and Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds (الله الروح القدس) for God the Holy Spirit. (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God.)

According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.[39]

Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made by Arabic-speaking Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Jordan, which contained references to Allah as the proper name of God, and some of the graves contained names such as "Abd Allah" which means "the servant/slave of Allah".[40][41][42]
The name Allah can be found countless times in the reports and the lists of names of Christian martyrs in South Arabia, as reported by antique Syriac documents of the names of those martyrs from the era of the Himyarite and Aksumite kingdoms.[8][43]

In pre-Islamic Gospels, the name used for God was "Allah", as evidenced by some discovered Arabic versions of the New Testament written by Arab Christians during the pre-Islamic era in Northern and Southern Arabia.[47][48][49]

Pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to have raised the battle cry "Ya La Ibad Allah" (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into battle.[50]

"Allah" was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.[51][52][53]

References:
1 "Allah". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

2 "God". Islam: Empire of Faith. PBS. Archived from the original on 2014-03-27. Retrieved 18 December 2010.

3 "Islam and Christianity", Encyclopedia of Christianity (2001): Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also refer to God as Allāh.

4 L. Gardet. "Allah". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online.

5 Columbia Encyclopedia, Allah

6 Brown, Francis; Driver, S.R.; Briggs, Charles. A. Hebrew and English Lexicon. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendricksen. p. 41, entry 410 1.b. ISBN 9781565632066.

7 Merriam-Webster. "Allah". Merriam-Webster. Archived from the original on 2014-04-20. Retrieved 25 February 2012.

8 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 8.

17 The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon – Entry for ʼlh Archived October 18, 2013 at the Wayback Machine

21 Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-29135-4.

22 F.E. Peters, Islam, p.4, Princeton University Press, 2003

29 Hitti, Philip Khouri (2002-09-06). History of the Arabs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 800. ISBN 9780333631423.

30 Böwering, Gerhard, God and His Attributes, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʼān, Brill, 2007.

39 Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, University of Chicago Press, p. 156

40 James Bellamy, "Two Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscriptions Revised: Jabal Ramm and Umm al-Jimal", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 108/3 (1988)

41 Enno Littmann, Arabic Inscriptions (Leiden, 1949)

42 Rick Brown, Who is "Allah" ? - International Journal of Frontier Missions, (23:2 Summer 2006), page 80.

43 Ignatius Ya`qub III, The Arab Himyarite Martyrs in the Syriac Documents (1966), Pages: 9-65-66-89

45 Adolf Grohmann, Arabische Paläographie II: Das Schriftwesen und die Lapidarschrift (1971), Wien: Hermann Böhlaus Nochfolger, Page: 6-8

46 Beatrice Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century according to Dated Texts (1993), Atlanta: Scholars Press, Page:

47 Rick Brown, Who was 'Allah' before Islam? Evidence that the term 'Allah' originated with Jewish and Christian Arabs (2007), page 10.

48 Frederick Winnett V, Allah before Islam-The Moslem World (1938), Pages: 239–248

49 Michael Macdonald, Personal Names in the Nabataean Realm-Journal Of Semitic Studies (1999), Page: 271

50 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, page 418.

51 Irfan Shahîd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University-Washington DC, Page: 452

52 A. Amin and A. Harun, Sharh Diwan Al-Hamasa (Cairo, 1951), Vol. 1, Pages: 478-480

53 Al-Marzubani, Mu'jam Ash-Shu'araa, Page: 302

The Arrangement of Verses and Chapters in the Qur'an

"The responsibility of its collection and its arrangement lies on Us" (75:17)

The word Jama‘ in the Arabic text of the verse above implies both collection and arrangement, which is a process quite different from the revelation. It is not true that the verses and chapters of the Holy Qur’ân were arranged after the death of the Holy Prophet by someone else, or that they were arranged in the order of their length; the longest coming first and the shortest last. It is also wrong to say that within the chapters the passages are joined together without any regard to either chronology of revelation or similarity of subject, and that most heterogeneous materials are put together without any regard to logical sequence.

The whole Qur’ân, complete in every respect, was available in the Holy Prophet’s life time (Caetani, 2:384). The Companions of the Holy Prophet say, ‘We used to write down the Holy Qur’ân in the time of the Holy Prophet’ (Hâkim: Al-Mustadrik, 2:611). The arrangement of chapters and verses in the copies of the Holy Qur’ân at present in our hands does not follow the chronological order of revelation and their arrangement is Tauqif, i.e. effected by the Holy Prophet under the guidance of Divine revelations (75:17-18). And whenever a revelation came, the scribes were called and ‘…the Prophet told his scribes where to place a particular verse that was just revealed.’(Abu Dawood, At-Tirmidhî). It is also said in the Holy Qur’ân:

"(But We have revealed it) in this manner (- piece by piece out of necessity). And (in spite of the fact that it has not been revealed all at once,) We have arranged it in an excellent (form and order of) arrangement (and free of all contradictions) "(25:32).

The concise phrase Rattalnâ-hu-Tartîlan in the above verse comprises the parallel concept of putting the component parts of a thing together and arranging them well, as well as endowing it with inner consistency. The word Tartîl refers to the measured diction and the thoughtful manner in which it ought to be enunciated. Thus, from the very first, it was meant that the verses and the chapters of the Holy Scripture should be arranged in an order different from that of their revelation, otherwise the revelation and the collection and arrangement would not have been described as two different things

.

There was an arrangement followed by the Holy Prophet and we know that many Companions of the Holy Prophet committed the Holy Qur’ân to memory and could recite it in the recognized order as followed by the Prophet. This shows that there was a connection of its verses and chapters, and there was a recognized division of the Book and a fixed form and sequence. The chapters were distinctly marked out and their number was determined. Without a known order and sequence of verses, the Qur’ân could not have been committed to memory. The present arrangement of the Qur’ân does not differ from that followed by the Holy Prophet. There are several sayings of the Holy Prophet from which this can be inferred. The Holy Prophet said, ‘Whoever reads the last two verses of the chapter entitled Baqarah on any night, they are sufficient for him’ (Bukhârî; 64:12). This shows that the Holy Prophet followed an arrangement which he had made known to his Companions. If such had not been the case he could not have referred to two verses as the ‘last’ two verses of a certain chapter. According to another saying of the Holy Prophet he told his Companions to recite the first ten and last ten verses of the chapter entitled Al-Kahf on a particular occasion. Had there been no sequence of verses, ‘the first ten verses and last ten verses’ would have been a meaningless phrase. Not only the verses of the Holy Qur’ân but even its chapters were arranged by the Holy Prophet himself. This is afforded by the following saying of Anas: ‘At the time when the Banû Thaqîf accepted Islam, I was in that delegation. The Holy Prophet said to us, 'When you people came to meet me, I was reciting my portion of the Holy Qur’ân which I used to recite daily, so I decided not to go out until I had finished it.' Thereupon we questioned the Companions of the Holy Prophet as to how they divided the Holy Qur’ân into portions for reading. They said, “We observe the following divisions, 3 chapters, 5 chapters, 7 chapters, 9 chapters, 11 chapters and 13 chapters, and all the remaining chapters beginning with chapter entitled Qâf’ (Fath al-Bârî, 9:39). This form of reading divided the Qur’ân into seven portions or Ahzâb, each portion to be recited in one day and, thus, the recital of the whole Qur’ân (114 chapters) was finished in seven days. This report of Anas shows an arrangement of chapters which is observed to this day by the whole MuslimUmmah. This and many other reports by the Companions of the Prophet give conclusive testimony to the fact that the form and arrangement of the chapters of the Holy Book was brought about by the Holy Prophet himself, and that the present arrangement does not differ in the least from the original of the time of the Prophet.

The efforts of some European scholars such as Well, Nöldecke, Muir, Rodwell and others such as N. J. Dawood to rearrange the Holy Qur'ân are misleading and are unworthy of being considered as scholarly.